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drray23

drray23's Journal
drray23's Journal
September 17, 2014

I grew up castrating hogs on an iowa farm so I will know how to cut pork ..

Joni ernst, gop candidate for senate in iowa...

Its almost as good as the "i am not a witch" ad..


September 12, 2014

Rachel Maddow made an interesting point yesterday

about how the president got personally involved in pushing for congress to give him tacit approval and money for the operations against ISIL. He decided to pick up the phone and personally phone GOP and Dems key members of congress to tell them to stop the vote on the continuing resolution so that he could insert something to fund military operations.

Apparently, stroking the GOP reps ego was enough to make them do a 180. The statement by Mike Rogers afterwards was quite striking, same for John Boehner.

I am curious as to whether or not doing this can work on other topics such as the immigration reform. Perhaps the repubs are so full of themselves that if you appeal to their ego, you get somewhere..

Either that or they used the fact the president phoned them as an excuse to fund the war without being criticized by their base. After all,they are supposed to oppose everything president Obama does, unless maybe its about going to war.

I am in the president's camp on this subject. I think we ought to do something but I certainly do not want to end up mired with 100,000 troops back in iraq or even syria. Its a no win situation. If he does not do anything he will be accused of not defending the US interests abroad and being too weak on fight against terrorism, if he does intervene he has to calibrate it carefully or he will be accused by some of his base to be a warmonger.

Fundamentally, that is the difference between sitting behind a keyboard and having clear black and white positions or being the president and having to deal with reality and hence, make decisions that will anger some people no matter what.

September 11, 2014

not impressed by richard engel

He is being billed as a foreign policy expert but all he does is deliver opinions making it sound like he had in depth ultimate knowledge of all geopolitical issues.

He used to just be a good war correspondent reporting from conflict zones. Now it seems he has morphed into s pundit who delivers his opinion from the conflict zone instead of a studio.

That is the impression he gives me anyway.

September 11, 2014

interesting that chuck todd is not on the msnbc panel

On rachel maddow. They are covering the president address and no sign of the "political director ".

September 5, 2014

i would have voted for it.

It is interesting that you proposed that in June and it failed to pass then.

Since then we had Ferguson and renewed attention on the behavior of the police and their excessive militarisation. Maybe the political climate is changing enough that your initiative may be reintroduced as an actual bill and get enough votes. Otherwise I fear that by the time the defense budget is up for renewal again, the outrage about ferguson will have died down and nothing will happen.

Keep up the good fight, representative Grayson, we need more politicians like you truly caring for the people.

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Gender: Male
Hometown: virginia
Member since: Sun Jun 1, 2014, 05:32 PM
Number of posts: 7,918
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